Page 70 of Brutal Heir

“Good,” I whisper. “’Cause I need your advice.”

He leans over and pats my hand. “That’s what I’m here for.”

CHAPTER 28

MY WORLD IMPLODES

Alessandro

“Where the fuck is she?” I growl over Matteo’s shoulder, my voice raw and fraying at the edges, as his fingers jab the keys in a rapid staccato mirroring my manic heartbeats.

An entire night that Rory’s been gone, and I’m losing my fucking mind. Twelve hours of deafening silence. Of unanswered texts, ignored calls, and a voicemail inbox filled with everything from fury-laced rants to hoarse, pathetic pleas.

And still, nothing.

At five o’clock this morning, I dragged Matteo out of bed to hack into Manhattan’s city-wide surveillance system to retrace her steps after she raced out of the Velvet Vault last night.

I don’t blame her for running, not after seeing Amber’s body. But strangely enough, the fear in her eyes didn’t seem to come from the bloodied corpse. It came after…

“Merda,” I hiss and bury my face in my hands. I can barely see straight after spending the entire night searching the city for any trace of her like a fucking psychopath. I prowled thestreets like a feral animal, corner to corner, club to corner store, eyes scanning every blur of red hair, convinced I’d missed her by seconds. Not only did I personally scour every inch of lower Manhattan, I also sent a dozen Gemini men to comb every damned alley and dark corner.

What if someone got to her?

What if whoever killed Amber went after my Red?

I dig my fingers into my scalp and press hard. The pressure doesn’t help. The pounding in my skull won’t stop. The image of Rory’s face as she turned away from me last night, eyes wide, terrified, and betrayed, loops through my mind on a reel of agony.

She didn’t just see a body last night.

She sawme.

And she ran.

“Fuck,” I grind out, swallowing the bile in my throat. I should’ve chased her. I should’ve said something,anything, instead of letting her vanish into the night like I meant nothing. Likewemeant nothing.

My gaze flickers to Matteo, needing to focus on anything except my colossal fuck up. In addition to having him patch into the camera network, now he’s looking into Rory’s background. Any friend or old co-worker she might have fled to for the night.

Dio, I can’t lose her. Not like this.

I pace a crooked circle around my office, nearly tripping over the edge of the rug. My body’s wrecked. My knee’s burning. My shoulder throbs. But I can’t stop. Can’t sit still. Because if I do, if I let myself feel the full weight of this... I might shatter.

How is it possible that this woman has lived with me for over two weeks, and I don’t know a single thing about her?

Nothing except that she lived at a halfway house and was raped by that piece of shit Chip Armstrong. But he’s not aproblem anymore. Not that I thought she would ever go back, but I even searched the house where they met last year.

No luck.

Now, Matty’s going through all her ex-employers.

“Anything?” I bark.

“Not much.” He cants his head over his shoulder and eyes me warily. I must look like a lunatic. “You know, your little nurse is like a ghost. She’s hardly left a footprint in the year that she’s lived in Manhattan. No family. No social media. And before that… I can barely find a single thing about her in Belfast. Just that diploma from her nursing school and not even an actual birth certificate for Rory Delaney.”

My brows slam together as I consider. That is odd. But that’s not helping us find her right now.

“Keep looking. Focus on the past year in Manhattan.”

“I am. We hit a dead end on the video surveillance once she dipped into the subway.” He shrugs. “I’m scanning the stops along the way, but there are literally hundreds of possibilities.”